So I recently discovered a new Japanese metal band that I like called Hanabie. a few months ago while Youtube Music auto recommended/auto played me one of their songs, which is something that their algorithm does I suppose just like Youtube. Last month I randomly looked them up to learn more about them and saw that they were having a world tour and that they were coming to Toronto on March 18, so I was like, shit why not, they cool so ended up going to see them the other day.
It’s been awhile since I been to a metal concert, for sure I think the last one I think was Sabaton in 2018 or 2019? I can’t remember but it was for sure before covid times. The concert was at the Danforth Music Hall and after a short ride after work to the Broadway station via TTC I can see the line to get in already. Nice. Doors open at 6pm but first band playing starts at 7pm.
The line of people waiting outside was interesting. It’s always interesting to see what kind of people show up to a metal show depending on the target demographics and how old/new they are but in this case they got a very wide array this time. We got some hardcore old metal heads but we also had some younger girls/women who were in like goth lolita fashion/schoolgirl clothes and alot of couples which is kinda odd for metal in general. There was also alot of standard goth looking folks with dyed hair and such but also a few families and such with little kids, which is a first I think. They said this concert was an all-ages event so it’s really interesting for sure. Mainly white but a good chunk asians in there as well and a few black/brown folk sprinkled int here as well.
Before I got in to wait for merch they did a security check to make sure you are not carrying any weapons or such, unfortunately for me I was carrying my mini swiss army knife on my keys and they told me to throw it away in the trash. I was like no man, is there some other way you can hold this and I can pick it up after the show? The guys were like whatever just throw it in a corner or something bring it back to your car, you just can’t have it inside. So I got out of the line for a bit, went up to a tree that had snow covering the dirt and stuck it in there to hide. I hoped that after the show I would be able to get it back and no one taking it, but we’ll see. Counting on that snow man, 50/50 chance maybe.
While waiting for merch I had to go up the stairs a bit and they have the dates for all the other acts to be at this venue. Hmm. Never heard any of these other guys. The turnout for this Hanabie show I overheard from the staff that it was almost sold out which is kinda impressive.
Still waiting in line for my goods. If there is one thing that I have learned about concert merch is to get your shit asap before the show starts because if you try getting it after/during, there is no chance you will get it because it might sell out or the line is too busy/crazy with people trying to leave. Some guy and his sister were talking about this too who were standing in line behind me. “This line is not as bad as the Final Fantasy distant worlds concert, that one was long and slow. If there’s one thing you should learn about going to concerts is get your shit first, don’t make the mistake of checking in your coat and other shit first, do that later, go straight for your merch.” Tru dat fellow uncle.
I think I only waited for like 15min or so, the line was pretty fast. I think it’s mainly because it’s a cashless venue. Concert merch of any kind is pretty damn expensive. Any tshirt alone is $60 damn, the price for merch tho, you can’t do anything about it due to our times. The guys behind me “I don’t really need a new shirt, I have way too many already, but because I am here I have to buy one, you have to you know” Tru dat unc.
Once I got my Hanabie merch I went inside to stand for the long haul. As per standard metal concert convention/practice, standing is the baseline normal, you only buy seated tickets if they run out of general admission tickets or you have to have seats in the balcony because you physically can’t stand or too old too. I am not that old yet and even though my lazy ass for a second though about buying the sitting ones before checkout I think I made the right choice. It’s still early, like half hour before the first band starts so its’ still pretty sparse.
Unlike Hanabie’s merch line outside the actual hall, the two other opener bands were much less busy and were placed inside. The one above is the opener band, Enterprise Earth, they literally had like no one buying their shit at this time. So empty that these two dudes even noticed that I was taking a random photo of the booth, jokes.
The second band to play tonight is called Nekrogoblikon, which as you can see is a goblin themed metal band. Jokes. As you can see they have a lot of merch, they are also a reasonably popular band that don’t take themselves that seriously, I mean, goblin metal? They had goblin plushies and even signed posters of the band, even their EP for sale.
Proof of existence, man’s not hot edition. Who needs a coat check bitch, I can wear my winter jacket and scarf the whole show!
At exactly 7pm the show began and Enterprise Earth got on stage. They are like a deathcore metal band and their vocals and riffs are the typical low-tone death growls from their main frontman vocalist. I can’t help but think the name of their band and not think of Star Trek, specifically the “Earth” word too. I have no idea where they came up with this name. From my early research of this band, they are from the US and been around for awhile probably 10 years maybe but are not that big, maybe only locally in their hometown/city. No original members of the band are currently in the band now as the old frontman who started the band left, which is one of those things where you gotta ask, can you really call this the same band if no original members are even in it anymore? I don’t know man but it happens from time to time. Overall their vocalist is alright, he tried his best to put up a good show and hype the crowd, even fully aware they are not popular and that everyone here is for Hanabie, they even said at one point to the crowd “how many of you have heard of Enterprise Earth before? raise your hand!” about like 10-20 people among hundreds raise their hand. “how many of you have never heard of us before raise your hand?” basically everyone raises their hand, “well, that’s good nice to see, I hope you guys remember us then if you like our stuff.” Well, their stuff was ok but it was very muddy and overly heavy which is fine but in this hall, it just makes it even more unrefined and raw, which is perhaps what they want, but it was like, I am not sure if the hall’s sound is not good or can these guys even play? Their music is great for moshpit shit, which was indeed happening but not really my thing.
Near the end of their set, which in total was about 45mins both band members of Hanabie and Nekrogoblikon went on stage and the main vocalist of Hanabie gave the Enterprise Earth frontman a birthday cake. So, yea, that’s kinda jokes. It was his birthday so they gave him a cake, that’s nice. Didn’t expect that you know, wow. After another 2 or 3 songs from Enterprise Earth they wrapped up and said thank you, please check out our merch in the back and they were off to dismantle their gear for Nekrogoblikon to play next.
It took the stage crew to setup Nekrogoblikon shit but yea, it’s their turn now. Nice blowup goblin inflatable, jokes.
When they were ready, Nekrogoblikon came on stage and played their shit. As a themed not that serious kinda gimmick band they did a great job. They had one of their vocalists in a goblin mask and full gear suit. Dude like was dancing and shit, doing fortnite dances and shit trying to do WWE wrestling aura farming poses and sicking out his butt and shit to the crowd, jokes.
Depite how kinda dumb and lame, their sounds is pretty unique. Pretty good actually, I was quite impressed by the goblin’s performance antics to put on a show and entertain the audience and get people hype. Nekrogoblikon itself is a kinda death folk metal band I would say that has too vocalists clean vocals and a high pitched death scream/growl, the goblin and the guy on the right from the previous picture. What surprised me is that the goblin guy was the one providing the clean vocals while the normal baseball cap man was doing the high pitched screams lol. I would think it would be reversed but I guess not lol.
While I wasn’t expecting much from them, they really impressed me with their onstage presence and showmanship. The clean normal vocal man had really good vocals, much better than Enterprise Earth dude, dude sounds like what you think a goblin would sound like singing and that shit is perfect for this band. Goblin dressed man could be anyone, but he does it for the show, otherwise he would just be normal man #2, need more gimmick I guess. Near the end of their set, they play a song called “This is it” which is one of their more popular songs saying this is probaly their last song. Some guy in the crowd yells “Fucking Goblins always Lie!” and that turned out to be true, as they played like another 4 songs after lol damn. They had a moshpit going but it wasn’t as strong at all compared to Enterprise Earth, they did however get numerous fans crowd surfing near the front of the stage, which is like wow. As they made their way out they of course called out their merch, gotta make that money you know.
After Nekrogoblikon I went out to have a piss. I decided to change my standing spot for the main attraction, more centered focused but also more crowded. You can see over time that the hall got more and more crowed as the shows went on. Some people really only showed up for Hanabie and skipped the two other bands. They took longer than usual to setup but then again they got the smoke machine going so yea.
Oh yea boi, the main attraction finally comes, Hanabie arrives in all their Harajuku metalcore shininess. Each member of the band is introduced separately to great applause and hype. Here is their main vocalists, Yukina, known by fans as the “Chaos Goblin” lol. I suppose it was intentional why they partnered with Nekrogoblikon.
Aww yea all the girls blasting their metal tunes. Gud shit. I would think these guys were inspired by Baby Metal in many ways but honestly I think they are much better than them, they are successors to them in many ways in my opinion. The entire band is female whereas on Baby Metal only the vocals are by the girls, and I think that really makes a difference.
Closer zoom on Yukina vocalist. With a nice mix of low death growls she also changes to like an anime high pitched tone voice which makes it really unique. In between songs some guy in the crowd was like “I LOVE YOUR SOCKS, MORE SOCKS!” I suppose this is to be expected for this particular unique metal band.
I thought that all the vocals were done by Yukina but now that I see them live I see that both guitarists also contribute clean vocals for some songs which I had no idea before having only listened to their songs, not so much their music videos.
The drummer girl was also really on fire too, good shit. They call their music “Harajukucore” since they are all dressed as gals from the bait ass tourist trap for fake fashion street in Tokyo Harajuku of the same same. I guess it tracks well. Alot of their songs are anime and game themed focused so whether or not these girls are real gals is up in the air which may be part of the bit but who knows. I mean they have a song called “OTAKU Lovely Densetsu” with english words in it say say “WE JUST LIKE YOU!!” lol.
The bass guitarist pretty good shit. I can hear her tunes, unlike hidden bass players that only fade in the background. Lots of people with their phones out too.
They also had sometimes their own camera guy take videos of them on stage performing and taking video shots of the crowd too for some songs. I think they probably collecting their own footage to make a compilation video for their tour or documentary when it’s over, nice.
Nice color stage changes and lots of camera out, interesting photos indeed. I recognized about 70% of their songs they played mainly because they are playing the newer ones that I discovered them by which is cool. This is apparently their third time in a row that they played in this exact same venue in Toronto for the past 3 years wow. Wow, I had no idea they liked to come to Toronto and perform that often lol. Usually bands do a year or two making a new album then take the next year to tour and do shows but Hanbie has done 3 straight years of touring and also realizing es and singles every year for the past few years, which I think is the new trend now to get popular. Hmm interesting.
Nearing the end of the show, since this is a Japanese band, they still got the whole encoreru thing going on and yea it was done. Nice heart their bro. They also asked for everyone to take a photo for records too, nice.
Shows over, time to get out. Nice.
I like the merch that dem goblins made. “Gobin Mode” Not bad would have brought if it was just a shirt. Nice hair too.
Place too lazy to put up the currently playing show today only for the future, lazy Danforth Music Hall. With that said I got out pretty quickly while lots of people still inside to pick up their coat and buy/pickup their merch. I had to check if my mini swiss army knife was still under the tree in the snow. I went to the tree and there were a couple of people standing in front of it. I kinda kneeled down between them and searched the snow area where I placed it. Nice, it was still there. lol. Well now I know that I should remember to not take a mini knife thing to a concert again, should have known better.
I thought about getting some food in the area but by the time the show was over and I was out, it was already past 10:30pmish. I still had work tomorrow and am going into the office again the next day. I left my bag and laptop in the office in a locker so I had to come back again regardless so I need to get some food and sleep at home. TTC shot, waiting for the subway east.
Everyone here is from the concert, nice. By the time I got home it was like 11:30pm, I took a shower ate some leftovers and then did a run of uma musuame, by the time that was done it was like past 2am already, fuckkk. Gotta get up early again tomorrow, only a like 4-5 hours of sleep.
Being a concert, I of course got some Hanabie shirts and merch. Nice shit. The hat was like $60 I think and both shirts like $60, damn that’s alot of money. $180 just for this shittt, but still no regrets. They are nice shirts and nice hat.
Back of the first one with touring dates. They had a few shirts with straight up photos of the band members and more anime girl illustrations on them but they were just ok. They even had one with chibi furry cat girls version on it, but nah not for me. Chose the ones that I thought were cool and most likely to wear in public.
Back of the Iconic shirt, the Harujukucore in full display. This shirt is like 50/50 home and public shirt, probably lean more into home tho since it’s not black. Iconic is the name of their newest single, the song itself is just ok, some of their older songs are better in my opinion.
Impressed with their goblin energy I decided to buy a shirt from Nekrogoblikon, they had some pretty nice looking illustration and shirt merch to be honest. This one was probably their best least joke looking themed one. Not bad, would wear outside. Another $60 ouch, concert merch man so expensive.
The back is pretty cool too with the tour dates. Nice. I am not entirely sure if the main figure is supposed to be a goblin or if it’s a GOBLIN SLAYER but either way it’s pretty cool. I like the name and font styling of their logo too, just like Hanabie’s metalish one. Too bad for Enterprise Earth, no merch brought from you, being your birthday did not do much to win me over, maybe next time.
With all that said, this was a great show and would definately go see Hanabie again if they came again for the fourth year in a row. But seriously? Three years in a row already? I guess touring really is the best way to make money from merch and gain new fans. And damn, youtube music algo doing it’s shit introducing me to bands and music that I like, it’s scary sometimes you know.